In recent years the consolidation of media into the hands of the uber-wealthy has been an ongoing venture for the world's billionaires. Elon Musk and X (formerly Twitter), Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, and now, the Ellison Family and… everything. This new age of billionaire media monopolies is a means to an end, media power is equivalent to political power and billionaires love this. Whether its influence, protecting their business interests, or influential political lobbying, they want it. And they’re going to get it through buying up all the major media outlets.

The billionaire that I want to focus on is none other than Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest people and a tech industry titan who co-founded the software company Oracle in 1977. Ellison is proudly financially backing his family's media ventures. Larry’s son, David Ellison, is the founder-CEO of Skydance Media, a media and film production company. Skydance started its media takeover in August when it acquired Paramount for 8 billion dollars. Paramount owned and operated networks such as Nickelodeon, CBS, Paramount-plus, and MTV. They are all now under Skydance (now known as Paramount Skydance post merger). Paramount Skydance is reportedly now preparing a cash bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, WBD owns the rights to HBO Max, HGTV, DC, TNT, CNN, and Cartoon Network among others as well. But don't fret, the media takeover doesn't end here. Larry's daughter, Megan Ellison, founded Annapurna Pictures in 2011. A successful T.V and film production and distribution firm in its own right, Annapurna is another one of the Ellison family's media arms. But back to David Ellison, Paramount Skydance successfully bid and bought the streaming rights to the UFC for 7.7 billion, the streaming rights to south park, and other right wing media properties. Did you catch that, “right-wing”. The Ellison family is buying up and devouring all these right wing media platforms and for the left wing ones such as CNN, it's turning them right. Larry Ellsion is a longtime Trump supporter and his media consolidation is aimed at shifting the media back to the right-wing. Through brute financial force, the Ellison family is singlehandedly vying to claim media control for themselves and their political opinions. Because as previously stated, media power equals political power, and what billionaire doesn't think that their politics are correct and right 100% of the time. The answer is none.

Equity Insights 

↑Tesla(TSLA): Tesla is gaining big this week off of news that its Founder-CEO Elon Musk purchased one billion dollars worth of company stock (over 2.5 million shares). Although insiders buying up shares does look good, he may be trying to curry favor with shareholders as they vote on a one trillion dollar pay package for Musk. Musk has implied he needs a bigger pay package to “stay focused” on the company. But Tesla and its vision is his life long goal right? Should he need higher pay to chase that?

↑Oracle(ORCL): A deal emerged on Tuesday 9/16/25 that Oracle (led by Larry Ellison), Andreessen Horowitz, and Silver Lake would synergetically control the US side of TikTok so it doesn’t get banned in the US. Oracle shares were up 1.5% Tuesday afternoon. Ellison's media consolidation voyage is ongoing and healthy

Theme of the Week

This week's T.O.T.W is going to be a little different. This week I am going to do a book review on a recently completed book of mine, 21st Century Monetary Policy by Ben S. Bernanke. As you may know Bernanke was the Fed Chair from 2006-2014 (during the prime years of the great recession/global financial crisis. This educational book details the many roles and actions that the United States central bank played and took throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The book starts at the great depression and the Feds creation in 1913 but starts getting detailed by the great inflation period of the 70s. It goes over the 1930s gold run and how our strict adherence to the gold:dollar peg caused a worse recession as the Fed was unable to ease policy. Later in the book Bernanke goes over Federal Reserve independence (ring any bells to today's world?) and how presidents such as LBJ and Nixon didn't do enough to tighten policy during inflationary periods because it's unpopular with voters. It was because of this fact that Arthur Burns (the Fed chair from 1970-78) did little to stop the inflation and thus made it “the great inflation” period because of Nixon's pressure to keep rates low. After this Paul Volcker (Fed chair from 1979-87) reinstated the Fed's independence by not letting presidents bully him and he hiked rates super high to end the great inflation period. The book then details crises such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the dotcom bubble of 2001, and of course the global financial crisis of 2008. Bernanke explains how the Fed reacted to these events and what monetary policy making tools it used to prevent damage.

In regards to the tools the Fed uses, Bernanke mainly goes over Quantitative Easing and how it helped the US economy during and after 2008 by adding bank reserves and lowering rates, and he goes over explicit forward guidance to push the economy (and Fed watchers) in the right direction. Bernanke also goes over future additions to the Fed's monetary policy toolkit such as… quantitative easing purchases of a broader range of financial assets for higher returns, funding for lending programs to increase bank lending, negative rates, and higher interest paid on reserve balances if banks lend more to stimulate the economy. Bernanke also describes the importance of monetary-fiscal relationships and how the dangers of a low natural rate (making the Fed unable to ease rates during a recession) can be prevented by additional fiscal policy stimulus.

Overall Bernanke's book is educational and thoroughly written, it is great for anyone wanting to learn more about our economy and about how our central bank influences it. 9/10 

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